[MPlayer-users] mplayer vs mpv

[Erik Auerswald]

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 09:34:03AM -0500, Michael Hawkins wrote:
> [...]
> Now I want them to play Internet stations and I don't seem to be able
> to get mplayer to work.
> [...]
> But it would be really nice to continue to use mplayer. I just don't
> know if it's something I am doing wrong or if it's a limitation of
> mplayer.
> 
> This works fine:
> mpv -playlist https://somafm.com/defcon130.pls
> 
> This does not:
> mplayer -playlist https://somafm.com/defcon130.pls

The MPlayer man page warns:

    The way MPlayer parses and uses playlist files is not safe against
    maliciously constructed files.
    [...]
    Do NOT use -playlist with random internet sources or files you don't
    trust!

As such this "limitation" might well be a deliberate decision by the
MPlayer project.

It seems as if MPlayer does not accept an HTTPS URL as playlist, but
only a file (or standard input).  The "-allow-dangerous-playlist-parsing"
option did not affect this in my tests.

The following works for me:

    wget -c https://somafm.com/defcon130.pls && mplayer -playlist defcon130.pls

It also works to pipe the playlist into MPlayer, but then MPlayer does
not accept input via keyboard:

    curl -sS https://somafm.com/defcon130.pls | mplayer -playlist -

It also works to extract the URLs from the playlist and give those to
MPlayer:

    mplayer https://ice6.somafm.com/defcon-128-aac https://ice2.somafm.com/defcon-128-aac https://ice4.somafm.com/defcon-128-aac https://ice1.somafm.com/defcon-128-aac https://ice5.somafm.com/defcon-128-aac

Kind regards,
Erik